10 Reasons You Don’t Need a Grass Lawn

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Good. Here are 10 reasons why you should stop fussing over your lawn and let it die.

1. Grass lawns waste water. No surprise here. According to the EPA, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used for watering lawns — and due to poor timing and application, most of this water is totally wasted.

2. Grass lawns waste energy. According to the EPA, each year in the United States:

$5.25 billion is spent on fossil fuel-derived fertilizers for lawns.

580 million gallons of gasoline are used for lawnmowers.

17 million gallons of gas are spilled each year refueling lawn and garden equipment – more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez. In addition to groundwater contamination, spilled fuel that evaporates into the air and volatile organic compounds spit out by small engines make smog-forming ozone when cooked by heat and sunlight.

3. Lawns waste time. You know all of those hours you spend mowing your lawn? Don’t you have something better to do with your time? I’m sure you can easily think of at least a dozen things you’d rather be doing. Playing with your kids or pets? Reading a book? Catching up with friends on the porch over a pitcher of iced tea?

4. Lawns are a waste of space. Why grow grass when you could grow a beautiful garden of native species and vegetables?

5. Lawns cause air pollution. While razor push-mowers are coming back, the majority of people in the United States still rely on the gasoline-powered lawn mowers, which have an enormous carbon footprint. The 54 million Americans mowing their lawns each weekend with gas-powered mowers may be contributing as much as five percent of the nation’s air pollution, according to the EPA.

The EPA estimates that the amount of pollution emitted by a lawnmower operating for one hour is equivalent to the amount of pollution emitted by a car driven for approximately 45 miles.

6. Lawns encourage the use of fertilizers and lawn treatments that are hazardous to people, animals, and water. Each year, the United States spends $700 million on the 67 million pounds of synthetic pesticides that are used on U.S. lawns, according to the EPA.

Comments

If I owned my own property I would replace all the grass. What I have here is less grass and more weeds. The one thing about the weeds is they need less frequent cutting and stay green even in drought periods when the grass is all brown.

hey amanda-prob is many cities are anti ground cover and most schools where kids learn “what is right?” have large mowed lawns in lieu of ground cover; hence kids are subliminally taught grass is good-you really need to attack these 2 institutions to accomplish a moderation of the mowed lawn-in Fla where we are we always felt tax policy that promoted front yard gardening could literally feed everyone in fla and many grocery stores would not be needed-most folks with front yard gardens produce way more than they can eat-there would be no need for any homeless since they could be recruited to tend these front yard gardens in exchange for food overage-oh yeh the “grass lobby is very strong”-you can start with Scotty on those tv adds-Best Conservastore